A daughter of the Deep South. A woman of extraordinary faith.
Trusted colleague to one of America's great ministers.
A keeper of love, loyalty, and grace across a remarkable century.
Mary Elizabeth Sheehan arrived in this world in Dothan, Alabama — a city of Southern warmth, close-knit families, and red-clay roots. She was her father's daughter from the very beginning: spirited, curious, and possessed of a grace that would only deepen with the years.
She was raised in Columbus, Georgia, a city shaped by the twin currents of Southern tradition and American military pride. The church steeples, the broad avenues, the scent of honeysuckle drifting off the Chattahoochee — Columbus formed Mary's sense of duty, her loyalty, and a quiet strength that would never leave her.
"She carried the grace of the South in everything she did — her laugh, her loyalty, and her unshakeable faith."
From Columbus it was a short journey to Fort Benning, where a young woman named Mary Sheehan would go to work for her country — and where, in the fullness of time, she would meet a decorated Army officer who would one day become the great love of her life.
Mary and Bob first found each other in the 1950s at Fort Benning — a young Southern woman and a decorated Army officer who had survived D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and the Korean peninsula. There was something undeniable between them, even then.
Life intervened, as it sometimes must. Both Mary and Bob married other people, raised families, and lived full lives apart from one another. But some loves are simply too large for circumstance to extinguish.
Years passed. Then — by extraordinary grace — Mary found Bob again. They began courting as if the decades between them had been little more than a long breath held, and this time they did not let go. They married and made their home in Rossville, Georgia, just across the Tennessee state line from Chattanooga, in the final and finest chapter of both their lives.
"Eight years of marriage. But it was a lifetime of love — and the story had started in the 1950s."
Bob Roser was born July 13, 1920, in Dayton, Ohio, and enlisted in the United States Army at the age of seventeen. He was at Normandy on D-Day plus four, fought at the Battle of the Bulge, served in Korea as a liaison to the United Nations, then in Japan, and finally at Fort Benning — where the most important meeting of his life took place.
Bob rose from enlisted man to the rank of Major, earned a degree in ergonomics engineering from Michigan State University, and was instrumental in the design of the F-111 aircraft. He was also, by those who loved him, remembered as a talented poet and a man with a great and particular love for dogs.
He passed away on March 3, 2013, at age 92, at Hospice of Chattanooga. His memorial was held at First Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga — with his dear friend Ben Haden present — and he was laid to rest at Chattanooga National Cemetery with full military honors.
Some people find their great love once. Mary and Bob found theirs twice. That is a grace most people never know.
Above every title she ever held, Mary Elizabeth Sheehan Roser was a mother. She raised two sons and a daughter, pouring into each of them the same qualities that defined her own life: Southern grace, steadfast faith, and a generosity of spirit that asked absolutely nothing in return.
A child raised in the tradition of faith, hard work, and the Southern values his mother carried from Dothan and Columbus into every home she ever made.
Mary raised him with the same warmth and the same conviction: that a life well-lived is one of love given freely, and faith held without condition.
In her daughter, Mary passed on the most precious inheritance of all: the grace of a woman who knew her own worth, trusted her God, and never stopped showing up for the people she loved.
Of all the chapters in Mary Elizabeth Roser's extraordinary life, few speak more to the depth of her character than her close personal friendship with the Reverend Ben Haden — one of the most celebrated ministers in twentieth-century America.
Mary worked for Ben Haden. Not at arm's length, not as a passing acquaintance — but as a trusted colleague within the inner circle of a man whose voice reached millions. She knew him. She was part of what he built. And when Mary and Bob Roser finally married — after a lifetime of finding their way back to each other — it was Ben Haden who stood before them and performed the ceremony. He signed their marriage certificate with his own hand. There are few greater expressions of friendship than that.
Ben Haden arrived at Chattanooga's First Presbyterian Church in 1967 and filled its pews — and eventually its overflow rooms — to capacity for thirty-one years. He was a former CIA operative, attorney, newspaper editor, and avowed atheist who accepted Christ at twenty-nine and devoted the rest of his life entirely to the Gospel. His radio and television ministry, Changed Lives, ran for nearly fifty years and was heard around the world on Armed Forces networks. Billy Graham was a regular viewer. President Nixon invited him to preach at the White House.
"There has never been one like him since."
— Mary Elizabeth Sheehan RoserMary knew the man behind the broadcast — his discipline, his enormous compassion, his humor, his habit of spending Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings visiting church members in hospital rooms. She knew the public Ben Haden that Chattanooga revered, and the quieter Ben that only those truly close to him ever saw.
When Bob Roser passed away in March of 2013, his memorial was held at First Presbyterian Church — the church Ben Haden had built into something extraordinary. By then Ben himself was bedridden, his health failing in his final months. He passed away just seven months after Bob, on October 24, 2013, at the age of 88. Chattanooga mourned. Mary mourned with a particular and personal tenderness — not as a congregant who had admired him from a distance, but as someone who had worked beside him, laughed with him, and called him friend.
His daughter, Dallas Haden Gibbons, continues the Changed Lives ministry today at changedlives.org — carrying forward the voice her father never stopped believing in.
October 18, 1925 – October 24, 2013
Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, 1967–1999. Founder of the worldwide Changed Lives broadcast ministry, heard on radio, television, and internet for nearly five decades. Preacher to millions. Pastor to one city. Trusted friend to Mary Elizabeth Roser.
"He spoke in street language to encourage believers and confront unbelievers with compassion and love. The programs were heard by multiplied millions across the nation and around the world." — Heritage Funeral Home, 2013
Let's Talk About ItAfter a lifetime of service — to her nation at Fort Benning, to her faith beside Ben Haden, to her family as a devoted mother, and to the great love of her life in Bob Roser — Mary Elizabeth turned her considerable gifts toward a remarkable professional second act. As an Aflac representative she became a top producer, earning the trust of every client the same way she had always earned trust: with warmth, with honesty, and with the particular grace of a woman who genuinely cared about the people in front of her.
They had waited a lifetime. And when the moment finally came, it was their dear friend and colleague — the Reverend Ben Haden — who stood with them and made it official. Every person in that room knew they were witnessing something rare.
Her husband's first name. Her maiden name. On a bridge she walked herself.
Some things simply cannot be explained — only marveled at.
Mary Elizabeth adored her brother Bob. Standing at his memorial bridge, walking across it herself — these were not small gestures. They were the acts of a sister who loved deeply and never took the people in her life for granted.
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